For the first time in the history of our Navy, women were enrolled in 1990 as military personnel. Although the Navy has by now employed women for six years in the medical and music services, women in the Navy are regarded critically by many of their male comrades, who are biased against them in a number of ways. In this context, the most flimsy arguments are brought forward, although a corresponding field trial with women aboard combat vessels of the Bundeswehr led to a positive result. Even though other navies have demonstrated that the integration of women into the Navy works, the biases remain. In particular, it is doubted whether they can be a match for the physical demands made on them.

This study is intended to contribute towards establishing whether women really are up to fulfilling the demands facing them in training courses and service assignments. It is to examine whether these biases have an actual basis and may therefore be regarded as facts, and whether an enrollment of women in the Navy may give rise to problems in the long run.

In order to clear up this question, first the selection criteria for men and women at the Naval Recruiting Center will be described, and then compared to the validity data from training courses and evaluations during service assignments.

A general point to be mentioned is that for women in the Navy there are limiting conditions. They cannot serve in all types of assignments and not aboard ships. They are not subject to compulsory military service and may therefore only enter the Navy as temporary-career volunteers for four years or longer. Moreover, they are subjected to stricter preselection criteria, as there is a low demand for women in the medical service and there are only limited training capacities. Barracks and ships are not built for different sexes.

The initial position of women as compared to men in the Navy is considerably worse. For one thing, they are only admitted to the medical career area and the music service, while there are some 35 other potential areas of assignment for men, particularly in the technical field.

For a pilot study in this field, a variety of data were collected, as it was impossible to predict, which data would turn out to be relevant. For this study, the following data -collected in the course of the selection procedure - were taken into account:

• biographical data
• ratings during the selection procedure
• results of intelligence and vocational tests
• results of the physical fitness test

Moreover, the Navy Enlisted Personnel Office was requested to make available all the following, electronically stored data about servicemen:

• acceptance conditions in accordance with the Military Career Regulation
• rank, period until promotion
• results of training courses
• marks given in evaluation
• medical fitness level
• marital status, number of children
• training records
• marks received in military training courses

The sample comprises all women enrolled since 1990. As a control group, all men that have been enlisted in the medical services, from that date onwards have also been covered. This resulted in a sample of 205 women and 116 men. As far as the women are concerned, this is a complete enumeration of all women enrolled in the Navy to date.

As for the familial situation of the male and female applicants, we find different tendencies: before entry into the Navy, there is no significant difference with regard to their "married" status, while after their entry into service some 6 % more women married. The largest percentage is unmarried, however. A natural consequence of this marital status is the higher number of children in the case of women. Mostly it is only one child, but there are also families with four children.

Concerning the age distribution, there are significant differences between the sexes as well. The average values for the men are at 23.1 years, while those for the women are at 23.9 years, with the distribution in case of the women showing two peaks, the second being at an age of 25 to 28 years, with a maximum of 36 years.

Female applicants more frequently enter service with a higher level of school education, i.e. there is a higher percentage of women with an intermediate school graduation (73% of the women as against 62% of the men). In the area of higher educational qualifications, women more often have a university admission certificate (9%), while more men have a technical college admission certificate (5%).

With regard to their professional situation, differences are clearly apparent as well. There are definitely more women still in the course of their vocational training (15% as against 21%), more women have successfully completed their training (10% as against 4%).

As far as the professional fields are concerned, women are frequently found in professions in the health sector. Men are predominantly in technical professions, and a large number are still at school (15%, as compared to 9% of the women).

In the course of the selection procedure, the applicants are evaluated in accordance with established criteria concerning their general military aptitude - in analogy to the criteria in service evaluation:

• sense of responsibility
• leadership
• social competence / cooperation
• willingness to learn and achieve
• psychic resilience
• judgment
• general physical fitness

In most of all criteria, the women are given significantly better assessments. The fact that the women are better in this is not astonishing, as in general women are only enrolled as noncommissioned officer candidates, that is to say, we are able to pick and choose the best ones. But even if we compare the women only to men of NCO material level, the women on average have the better marks.

Only with regard to physical fitness do the women get worse marks than the men -despite slightly lowered standards. 18% of the women, as compared to only 3% of the men, are marked as unsatisfactory.

The assignment of candidates is principally based upon the results of computerized psychological performance tests:

• figure reasoning test
• verbal comprehension test
• arithmetic test
• spelling test
• mechanical comprehension test
• spatial orientation test

Altogether the women turn out to get worse results in the tests, at least in the arithmetic and technical tests. They are very slightly better in the reaction test and verbal comprehension test, with a significant better average only in the spelling test.

The following will show how the candidates examined and enrolled by the Naval Recruiting Center have turned out in training courses and in their service assignments.

Let us first take a look at the distribution of ranks at the time of the examination. As a result of the higher enrollment ranks under the Military Career Regulation, there are significant distinctions in the distribution of men and women.

It is obvious that the women often occupy higher ranks. The rank of petty officer 2nd class is mostly occupied by women - 94 as compared to 39 men. The distribution at petty officer 1st class level is similar: 17 women are confronted by 8 men. At the lower rank levels, the men have a higher percentage.

In this context it is important to establish the total share of women as a group within the medical service of the Navy. The total number of servicemen in the medical service at present amounts to 1122. This includes 205 women (18%). However, by now these 18% already amount to 38% of the petty officer 2^nd/lst class levels. As yet it was scarcely possible for the women to rise to the level of chief petty officer and higher owing to their comparatively short time in the Navy.

It also turned out that among other things women were promoted to petty officer 2nd class much faster. The average for women promote approximately 8.5 months earlier than the men, who are distributed relatively evenly from first to fourth service year.

The quality of the selection by the Naval Recruiting Center may be seen in the training course results of male and female personnel. There are no evident differences in the distribution of marks during basic training. In the training course for petty officers 2nd class, the mark distribution is marginally worse for women than for men. The failure rate is slightly higher among the men with three failed candidates against one female candidate.

The distribution of marks in the training course for petty officers 1st class is similar to that in the course for petty officers 2nd class. Twelve men and 37 women finished the course.

In the medical specialized training for petty officer 2nd class, the women are clearly in front. One woman failed (men 2), but three women obtained the best results.

The most important criterion for military personnel is their validity on service assignments. For this assessment, the written evaluation by the military superior is used.

In a comparison of the evaluation averages among men and women, some highly significant differences become apparent. The men only show strengths in the areas of readiness for action and social care behavior. The women, however, much more often surpass the men significant in resilience, command supervision, articulateness, and vocational skills.

It is extraordinary, though, that women are given lower marks for the social care behavior criterion than men. An explanation of this behavior might be that women in a male society must present themselves as more masculine and hard, and are not allowed and willing to follow the feminine stereotype too closely.

The areas of the medical service to which women and men were respectively assigned, and thus the military occupational specialty (MOS) numbers awarded to them, were also examined.

In this context it is worth mentioning that the women are awarded the grades of medical petty officer 2nd class and 1st class rather frequently. The fairly rare billets in special areas - for instance, as dental assistant, X-ray assistant, trained nurse and diving medical corpsman - are held by women. Only in the MOS of medical petty officer 2nd class (OP assistant), men are in the majority.

Owing to the better qualification and previous professional experience of the women in these specialties, men are effectively no longer introduced into these areas of work, as the women hold these particular billets for many years. Meanwhile, the men have to be at sea and cannot be considered for these particular shore billets.

What is to be said about the physical medical fitness state of women?

Medical fitness grade 1 implies that the candidate may be regarded as healthy without any reservations. This grade is awarded among women in about 17% of the cases, while among men the percentage is only 7%. Normally - at least among women - medical fitness grade 2 is awarded, which is to say that with regard to his/her health the candidate is not completely free of small alterations and symptoms. Medical fitness grade 3 precludes an enrollment in the Navy because of medical elimination. The fact that one woman and four men with this grade nevertheless are in the Navy, is due to the medical fitness grade having changed over the course of their military careers. The difference between the medical fitness grades of male and female applicants is highly significant.

In a study of this kind there is an opportunity of comparing the methods used in the selection procedure to the validity criteria in service assignments and training courses.

Before we can turn in some detail to the correlation coefficients of evaluations and test values with validity criteria, a few remarks concerning the evaluation factors which can influence correlations.

The rating scale of the Naval Recruiting Center shows an uneven distribution; that is to say that the mark 7 (unsatisfactory) was given disproportionately frequently, while mark 1 (very good) occurred practically never and mark 2 only very rarely. The distribution of data was also reduced owing to the fact that applicants with a mark 7 were not enrolled at all.

The fact that the rating scale was not really fully exploited in the training courses of the Navy further reduces the correlation. Mark 1 occurs practically never.

For the prediction of a successful completion of the general training course for petty officers 2nd and 1st class, the criteria of leadership, judgment and psychic resilience have average correlations from r =.34 to r = .36. The results of the technical training course for petty officers 2nd class may be prognosticated on the basis of the results of the concentration (r = .41), intelligence (r = .36), arithmetic (r = .34), and spelling (r = .33) tests. The sports test produced only a faint correlation (r = .25).

A comparison between the ratings at the Naval Recruiting Center and the service evaluations does not result in high correlations, as the evaluations are written in the fourth service year. Sometimes a period of up to twelve months intervenes between the testing and enrollment in the Navy, which is to say that any prognosis would have to cover five years. In the course of that period the behavior of young people may change. Yet the changes always may be seen to have a positive trend. Education and training in the service challenge and shape the servicemen in a positive way.

As far as the actual comparison of the ratings at the Naval Recruiting Center and in service assignments are concerned, for instance, 81 servicemen in the evaluations and 44 candidates at the Naval Recruiting Center were rated as "good" with regard to the resilience criterion. The situation is similar for other comparable characteristics. In other words, the Naval Recruiting Center applies considerably stricter standards, the difference on average amounting to a whole grade.

The actual correlations between the evaluations are between r = .28 and r=.35 for comparable characteristics. Here, the criteria of judgment, leadership ability and sense of responsibility provide the best value for prognostication.

A factor analysis of the military aptitude characteristics and the test results at the Naval Recruiting Center did not reveal any divergent factor structures between men and women. The factor analyses of the service evaluations showed no differences either.

Altogether, the Naval Recruiting Center may be said to have made a fairly good selection.

• Women are older, show themselves to better advantage in the selection procedure, and are given better aptitude ratings. Despite slightly weaker test scores and lower achievements in the sports test, they generally obtain better prognoses. This result is certainly an artificial product of the stricter preselection among the women. It may also well be that the young men applying as medical personnel candidates do not altogether correspond to the soldier stereotype, or that some male applicants regard the medical service as definitely a secondary choice. Still, they have to present themselves as future soldiers first of all during the selection procedure, regardless of their potential later assignments. Therefore the appearance of the men in their interviews at the Naval Recruiting Center may turn out less positive.

• In the aptitude tests, the women - with the exception of the linguistic sector - are less successful, although the evaluations show a definite change in this respect later on.

Here, the rider "very pronounced" is fairly frequently added for women with regard to the mental agility and mental capacity characteristics. Perhaps the emphasis in the tests for the Bundeswehr as a technical army is rather on natural sciences and technological aspects. This might lead to lower grades for the women. It is worth considering a review of the contents of these tests under this aspect.

• Under the Military Career Regulation, women are enrolled in higher ranks according to their previous vocational training and qualifications.

In civilian life, women often have learned a profession in the nursing sector. Therefore they are better qualified to be enrolled as petty officers 3rd or even 2nd class, if they are considered to show military service aptitude - and their grades are better in this area as well.

• Women are given similarly good or better marks in training courses.

Maturity, previous education, and the desire to prove better as a minority are confirmed by better results.

• Women are given significantly better marks in the evaluations.

During the selection procedure, the women's personalities already seem more mature. They know what they want, and work to achieve their objectives more consistently and assiduously. In the end, these characteristics, which are already recognized in the course of the selection procedure, are again reflected in the evaluations. Possibly this serves to confirm the prejudice against "swotters", compared to whom the men have "no real chance".

• Women require shorter periods for their promotion to petty officer 2nd and 1st class. They are therefore available for higher billets earlier on.

It is definitely in the interest of the Navy to have military personnel complete their training and become available for service earlier on, improving the relationship between the duration of training and duration of assignment. However, this should not apply only to women, because that would merely increase resentment and prejudices.

• The physical unfitness of women in the Navy could not be proved in this study.

It is true that the women are rated less well than the men in the physical fitness test in the course of the selection procedure, but in training courses such as those for petty officers 2nd or 1st class - which among other things deal with physical stresses - this is not reflected at all. Rather, women tend to get better grades than the men there. With regard to the medical fitness level, the women also show significantly better results than the men.

In this context, the opinion is always stated that medical orderlies must be able to carry casualties on a stretcher. This should be questioned with regard to how often this situation occurs and which billets actually require it?

The sports test at the Naval Recruiting Center is not necessarily a suitable instrument for selection, therefore this is not regarded as a main point. The sports test consists of pure strength exercises in order to establish the current exercise level. It has been conceived by men for men in the military service.

• Women are more often married and have more children than the men from the control sample.

This may tend to support the bias that women need more frequent periods of absence to care for the children. Yet this is not confirmed by data analysis, as only 5 of a total of 205 women applied for parental leave.

The argument that owing to the double burden of family and profession, women cannot fulfill their duties adequately, is refuted by the favorable evaluations.

• At present, men are still the majority in the medical service, while women are the highly qualified minority. This minority -currently under critical observation - is going to become a majority, if the present enrollment method is maintained.

In the course of only five years, women have conquered a rather prominent position in the area of the medical service. The medical service will become a female domain in which the men may play the part of assistants or shipboard medical orderly. This trend is consequently going to affect all ranks up to the officer specialist level.

In this context the question needs to be examined whether it is possible to preserve equal opportunities in the Navy. In this case the men would have to fight for an equality of rights.

The above-mentioned facts are predestined to reinforce a male bias against women soldiers in the Navy. The men have to go to sea, and the billets on shore are reserved for the women. Moreover a young male soldier in the medical service must necessarily feel frustrated and depressed, when in comparing he realizes who has done basic training together with him, and in which qualified billets on shore he finds those women comrades later on.

Yet even then a similar phenomenon may occur as it is even now apparent in the medical service area: the women will fulfill their duties with more motivation and ambition in order to be better than their male colleagues, and with the effort resulting from this motivation, they are going to achieve this aim with better results. However, the problem will then be more widespread.

2. Equal enrollment criteria for all medical service candidates. That is, a stricter preselection also among the men, and enrollment only of petty officer candidates to enable the men to compete more successfully with the women in training courses and service assignments.

3. Admittance of women to do their job on combat vessels in the Navy.